Is the ROG Xbox Ally Worth a look?

At Gamescom this week, the XboxEra Team descended en masse to the Microsoft Business area to go hands on with the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X. Is this partnered device worth checking out for you, or even the average gamer? We’ll dig into the details in this ROG Xbox Ally Hands-on Preview.

Two Flavours, All Xbox

The ROG Xbox Ally comes in two flavours – The more standard Xbox Ally and the much beefier and kitted out Xbox Ally X. The white version (Why it’s not called the Xbox Ally S is beyond me!) is going to be the more affordable of the two devices with smaller storage capacity for games of 512Gb, less video memory with 16Gb of LPDDR5X-6400, among other cost saving reductions like a lack of Xbox’s ‘impulse triggers’. The chip for this one is the Z2A, which has been optimised by the team specifically for this device. Per Roanne Sones, Head of Xbox Devices, “it has the best balance of price, performance and power of any handheld in in the market.”

The Xbox Ally X is the beefier, bigger brother of the two with a number of additional features and spec bumps to justify what is likely to be a significantly higher price point. We’ve got 24Gb LPDDR5X-8000 Memory, a 1Tb M2 SSD, Impulse Triggers and a larger battery. The Xbox Ally X also has the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Processor, with dedicated AI functionality.

Like most, my eyes roll up into the back of my skull when I hear folks start harping on about AI, but per Xbox, ‘The benefit of being able to have that as a separate piece of silicon is that you can build experiences without impacting gameplay because you can still keep 100% of the GPU focused on games.‘ For Xbox, it’s about future proofing to some degree what this and future devices are going to be able to do.

I think we all came away very impressed with both Xbox Ally’s, but the white, cheaper Xbox Ally is the more interesting of the two devices ASUS and Xbox are offering here. Yes, the hardcore gamer is going to want the more expensive Xbox Ally X, but the reality is the Xbox Ally is going to be more affordable, and is going to be directly competing with devices like the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch 2.

As a current ROG Ally X owner, holding either of these new devices in your hands makes the various ergonomic improvements the teams have made immediately noticeable, just in how the device sits in your hands. It really does feel like holding a slightly heavier Xbox Elite Controller. As someone who already delights in pads that let you add additional weights, it felt great.

Ergonomically, that’s the biggest change. We also have our ‘ABXY’ Xbox buttons, and the guide button is here too, though not in it’s usual spherical form. Instead, it’s been placed on the far left of the device, keeping the more angular design stylings of ROG. Overall, it doesn’t look as ‘derpy’ as say the PlayStation Portal, and obviously has a lot more going on under the hood.

A New Home

For both ASUS and Xbox, the plan here is to continue the original mission of the ROG Ally, enabling gamers to play their games from multiple stores on one compact and capable device, powered by Windows 11. But as any existing ROG Ally owner will tell you, the worst thing about the ROG Ally? Windows itself.

Anytime Windows had to appear on your handheld, from login, to the god awful virtual keyboard, to background tasks sucking precious resources, the operating system made using the ROG Ally occasionally painful, even with ASUS’ efforts with their Armory Crate application. Thankfully, the Xbox Ally X brings with it a whole new front-end – while still being powered by Windows 11 Home – it makes it feel so much more like a console than ever before.

The first thing to note about the new handheld Xbox experience is how intuitive it is for anyone used to navigating either the Xbox Console dashboard or Xbox PC app. The login screen is replaced with a contextual PIN login, and just like Xbox, each button has a controller button assigned it (If you’ve ever used a PIN on console for parental controls, it’s exactly the same). Of course you can still use the built-in finger print reader too.

The Home Experience has a couple of really great features. First to note is the Jump Back in section, which does just what it says. If you were playing elsewhere, it’ll follow your activity so you can stay on task with whatever game you’re playing. And if you haven’t got it installed on your device locally? It’ll happily boot up the cloud option instead, or let you remote stream it from another device locally on the same network. Pretty nifty.

A press of the Xbox Nexus will bring up the Game Bar, which can navigated either by touch or the bumpers, just like on console. You can also see performance metrics, as well capture options, settings and more. You can also access the updated Command Center, which has been completely integrated into Game Bar on the left of the home widget. From there you can adjust wifi, bluetooth, performance, screen brightness etc with ease. It even supports gestures, like swiping from the left to bring up the game bar, or the right to bring up the notification centre (which is still very windows, and looks a little out of place – though the team say they’re working on it)

For the most part, Windows just…isn’t here, at least on the surface. The team have removed several components of Windows to make it a controller-first device, and it really does make all the difference in the world. It’s not perfect however – to install apps like Discord, Steam or other storefronts, you’re still going to need to play around in Windows 11, and it still operates much like it does right now. Thankfully, loading apps and playing from other stores is pretty great is you’re just gaming and staying within the confines of the Xbox ‘full-screen’ experience.

Performance and Power

I think we were all unanimous in our praise at how well games performed on both the devices. While we expected the Xbox Ally X to do very well based on specs alone, I was genuinely surprised at just how well – DOOM: the Dark Ages, Gears Reloaded and Forza Horizon 5 were extremely performant, and looked fantastic at the same time.

Of course, indie gems like Balatro were flawless, and I loved that while you could use the controller as normal, the game supported touch thanks to the inbuilt touch screen, which is great for experiences that utilise it.

What really surprised us was the Xbox Ally – here was Forza Horizon 5, looking as beautiful as ever, running at a solid 60FPS. Our Art & Design Lead Predrag has an existing Ally, and for him the difference was dramatic to say the least. Additionally, games like DOOM: The Dark Ages also ran surprisingly smooth at what looked like Medium settings. Even Expedition 33, a game that was pretty demanding at launch for a lot of PCs was running nicely and looking as lovely as ever.

The elephant in the room is that of course, as much as these devices are being called Xbox’s, they will not natively run your existing console library. For someone in the industry, I understand the why – of course they won’t, they’re PCs. But for the average gamer that may expect to be able to just pick up a new handheld come October 16th and play everything they own, they’re going to be in for an unpleasant surprise.

A Solid First Step

There are still several thoughts I have after spending a decent amount of time with both handhelds this week. One, it’s an incredibly exciting first step for the Xbox platform that increasingly seeks to be ‘everywhere’, allowing my games and where I want to play them to almost feel like the primary ‘goal’ of the platform.

It’s curious that we have a release date, but not a price for either as of yet. The word on the ground at Gamescom is that following the leaked prices, ASUS and Microsoft closely monitored reactions. The original plan was indeed to reveal both the release date and pricing during the Gamescom stream, including how and when pre-orders would go live. Instead, it seems both ASUS and Microsoft are working to further subsidize the handheld devices, in an effort to perhaps improve the pricing in the eyes of consumers. Any pricing you’re seeing right now it seems, is merely placeholder.

It’s an interesting step for this new hardware relationship, but overall I think the delay in detailing pricing for the Xbox Ally is a promising sign. One, it shows a desire to give the relatively new ‘Handheld Xbox’ a genuine chance at being more than a hardcore, niche product. Two, it shows that Xbox and ASUS are very much paying attention. Sure, it would have been smoother to share all the information in one hit, but if an improvement on the rumoured ‘placeholder’ pricing is on the way, that can only be a good thing.

It’s tricky to estimate just how much Windows will get ‘out of the way’ in real world use, and how stable and performant the Xbox Full Screen Experience will be when I’m playing games on the device on a daily basis. I want to be able to fully test the battery life of both devices across different performance settings to see just how long they can function as a genuine handheld before needing to be plugged in. Equally, what improvements have been made to the Windows built in ‘Sleep/Hibernation’ functionality – can I do a quick power off and not find my device to have its battery depleted a few hours later? How will Windows updates be handled? These are all questions that I don’t yet have an answer for.

Despite this, I can’t deny I’m excited for both of these devices. As a gamer that mainly plays on Xbox, and fully takes advantage of all the benefits the ecosystem has to offer, from Play Anywhere to Xbox Game Pass and ‘Stream-Your-Own-Games’, this offers me some seriously flexibility, especially when I’m on the road. For Xbox, this is just the beginning, and I’m pretty keen to go on the journey.

We look forward to bringing you our in-depth review coverage of the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X closer to launch. Both devices are releasing worldwide on October 16th.